Saturday, September 15, 2012

Day 146: I love Bend!!! <3 <3 <3

Tuesday 9/11/12
Miles 0

Oh my god I freaking love Bend!!! :). This town is amazing!!! <3 <3 <3. It has now become my favorite trail town. The reason I like it better than Idyllwild is because it's next to a body of navigable water (the Deschutes river goes right through town and you can paddle it). But then again it's hard to compare the two because Idyllwild is a small town, and Bend is a big city.

The B&B includes an amazing all you can eat breakfast which was delicious!!! Oh! And we saw Super Mom at breakfast this morning!! Lol!! I guess she got in late last night. It was so cool to see her again! She was staying til Friday.

I went back to REI today to get new shoes. I'm on my 4th pair of 5 finger shoes. Oh, if anyone is curious, here is my progression of footwear for the entire trip:
--> North Face Trail runners (50 miles)
--> crappy flip flops (27 miles)
--> good flip flops (100 miles)
--> Chaco sandals (100 miles)
--> good flip flops (73 miles)
--> 5 finger shoes (350 miles)
--> Montrail trail runners (350 miles)
--> 5 finger shoes (1,000 miles)

5 fingers for the win! :D People on the trail kind of freak out when they find out I've done over 1,000 miles on them. The question I get the most is, does it hurt? Well, pain is kind of relative. I mean, when you're going over large stones, it will hurt in shoes. So of course it hurts in the 5 finger shoes which have no sole. Lol! But like I said, pain is relative, and I hate wearing shoes because they totally suck, so I will go through great lengths to not wear shoes. :)

After going to REI we went to go look for a laundromat to wash Kyle's sleeping bag. You can't use a top load washer for down sleeping bags, front load washer only. And you need to use a commercial sized dryer. So we found a laundromat, it happened to be next to Silvermoon Brewery which is one of Bend's many microbreweries. How convenient. :D. The sleeping bag took forever to dry so we went to browse a bunch of used book stores (Bend has about 5 within walking distance). The library in Bend is also HUGE. I'm pretty sure it's bigger than the Hawaii State Library in downtown Honolulu. The sleeping bag still wasn't dry so we went to look for food that was good and cheap. Which isn't hard because there are lots of happy hours at all the eateries downtown. We ended up at this awesome mediterranean food place and I got this delicious cheese and pita dish for $5! Oh my god it was so good. I looooove cheese!!!! :D

Oh, by the way Bend has this thing called the Ale Trail, it's a map with a "hiking" trail around downtown bend to about 10 of its micro breweries. Lol! It's so cool, you have this "passport" type thing where you get a sticker for each of the breweries you go to. When you collect all the stickers you can redeem it at the visitors center for a cool silicone pint glass. That's cool! We totally would have done it except it would have costed a lot of money to go to all the breweries, and we didn't really have time.

On the way back to our room we were looking for a liquor store because Kyle wanted whiskey. Oregon is not like California or Hawaii where you can just buy liquor anywhere, you have to get it at a state sanctioned liquor store. Which is a horrible pain in the ass because we couldn't find one within walking distance. However, we did meet an awesome random stranger walking on the street, who ended up inviting us to a bar by his hotel and bought us 3 rounds of drinks. Thats so cool!! Thanks Scotty "Trash Man"! He earned the nickname in his days of being a roadie for touring bands and living in a tour bus.

We didn't get back til late. Dang, where did the day go?? I didn't really get anything done that I was supposed to. Dangit! Ah well, Bend is a frickin epic town <3

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